Month: January 2002

Immediately, I liked the name of this weblog – Croc O’ Lyle, and was happy I could read the story behind the site name.



Lyle’s purpose here is to write about things that he may: “find interesting or have to say related to usability, web design, information architecture and user experience practices”, according to his weblog. And Lyle follows through with exactly what he has set out to do.



The site design is very basic and clean – no extra frills or annoying color schemes.



The point of Lyle’s website is very well achieved, and Lyle does a fine job of posting a great deal of information in a small area of writing. His thoughts are concise, yet complete, and he does a nice job of not writing way over the average reader’s head.



If “usability, web design, information architecture and user experience practices” are your bag, then this is your place to visit. If you have no clue what those things are, then this probably isn’t a site you’ll enjoy. Croc O’ Lyle

This site drove me nuts. The pop up ads freaked out my computer and crashed it. I didn’t like the layout either. It was a boring blue background with an orange/blue graphic where the navigation bar was with unattractive black and white buttons.



So I thought that maybe the blog will make up for the bad first impression. WRONG. There were no archives and the posts that were available didn’t say much or give me a good feel for what the author was trying to convey through her writing. The posts mostly consisted of online quizzes or personality tests and if not, then they were very brief posts discussing a book she saw at the store or what she needed to buy or do. One post she said the word “apparently” way too much and it made me wonder if she even read her post before she published it.



This site is very unorganized and difficult to navigate through. I think the author needs to sit down and figure out what feel she wants for her site and to work more on her writing.Otto Ignatius

I wasn’t too crazy about the layout of this site when it first came up. Singer Brandy greets you on every page, but I’ve never really been a fan of large images of people, especially famous ones on weblogs. The navigation area took me a while even when it was told to me where it was. I think the font should be a bit bigger so it’s more obvious.



So Ross is a 15 year old from Scotland and is the author of the site. I read some of his posts and started to like them since he was pretty straight and to the point with his posts and didn’t go into tons of details about situations. But then the more I read, I noticed that it seemed like he had a hard time staying on one subject which bothered me like this one:



“phew. well, school wasn’t too bad. pe was bleugh as always, but not as bad as it usually is. i’ll add some more reviews soon, i have lots to type up. same for the writings. alex is so lucky – she’s going to a muse concert in november. [envies] recently i’ve been thinking a lot about college.”



I liked his writing, but I think he just needs to expand a little more on his topics so it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to cram a bunch of little things that happened into one short post.



Ross needs to work a little more on his writing, but over all it’s an okay site.electrickiwi.co.uk

Sometimes people can’t pull off a website consisting of just news links, because there are so many out there. Eliot, fortunately, is not one of these folks. He has put together a very informative, and yet very entertaining website.



A brief overview of the design – it’s simple. It’s what you want. It doesn’t draw attention away from the content, which is the most important thing going on at this site.



Eliot does a very fine job of presenting the news, keeping it short when needs to be and more narrative when it should be. His words are professional, yet casual to read, and his personal thoughts very clearly reflect his beliefs and opinions. Not many people can go about presenting that in an easy-to-read way, but Eliot does this perfectly.



Get your daily news right here. Seriously, just forget about CNN, or your other favorite news site for a bit and jump right on in to “Follow Me Here…” for the news, and a realistic viewpoint on Eliot’s opinion of what’s gracing the headlines.



Follow Me Here…

What is so great about a Blogger template site named after an actress, written by a guy who doesn’t care about her, designed with a horrible salmon-colored background with a non-aestheticly pleasing layout? It took me a while to answer this question, but I think I finally decided that it’s the dead-pan, tongue-in-cheek humor with which the author presents the content.



The site is named after Amanda Peterson, an actress I have never heard of, and is sprinkled with pictures of her. Each pic has pink devil horns and a pointed tail painted on, ala the Microsoft Paint airbrush tool. The author explains in the FAQ that he chose the name for his site becuase his fiance resembles the actress. Kind of random, but a pretty funny basis for a weblog.



I found myself laughing aloud at the funny Q/A’s in the FAQ, as well as the anecdotes under the “where I was when…” section.



The weblog entries were full of more of the same sense of humor, with the author talking about random things in his life, all with a funny slant.



To top off the site, the author’s photo section turned out to be quite hilarious, especially with captions such as “My dad with a miner” and “My parents with a clown”.



Call me crazy, but the lack of web design talent and the utter randomness of the content mixed to become the perfect formula for a unique site with a rare knack for remaining humble, funny, and interesting. Amanda Peterson